Simit Raval

Australian Centre for Sustainable Mining Practices​UNSW Australia

Dr. Simit Raval has over 20 years of combined experience in mining industry and academia. At present, his research and teaching is primarily focused on Mine Environmental Monitoring and Management. ​Simit is unique among mining engineers/academics in Australia in his considerable mining engineering experience coupled with development of applied remote sensing techniques. His mining engineering background and the remote sensing skills provide a uniquely valuable strength to visualise, identify and monitor the environmental footprints of mining activities - a critical research focus that is attracting much interest from researchers internationally and that the mining industry is currently seeking to peruse.​

A quantitative record of the mined landscape is deemed to aid qualitative assimilation of the knowledge of the mined land and design of an efficient rehabilitation strategy. Cutting edge technologies such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and hyperspectral sensors enable physiochemical insights into the biota. With the UAV hyperspectral system, it is now possible to spatially chart an ‘Eco-Space’ for species distribution, diversity, natural chlorophyll levels, photosynthetic activity, foliage cover and much more. In this study, we exhibit a framework to fingerprint a Mine Eco-Space for its natural functionality. A Fabry–Pérot interferometer (FPI) type lightweight hyperspectral sensors has been used to generate geo-spatialised classified raster products unique to a mine environment. The UAV flight campaign was performed at ecologically complex swamp environment within a mine lease located in the New South Wales. The presentation will include the resultant classified raster maps for the species composition as well as the derived biophysiochemical attributes of the species at a very high spatial resolution. ​